I still dislike Efflorescence being attached to Swiftmend when Wild Mushroom is a blatantly obvious way to give druids a bit more AoE healing while also allowing resto to use one of their new Cata spells. Very elegant.

Having to put down mushrooms and then detonate them would take too long for something needed right now.

AoE healing is generally not something you need immediately. It's a matter of topping everyone off so the next wave of AoE doesn't kill them.

And it's not like Efflorescence is our primary source of AoE healing to begin with.

I mean, when you need AoE healing, you usually need it on everyone, and it's based on location and not current health on grid.

It'd be slightly more dependable to drop a circle on the melee or range stack, rather than swiftmend a square on grid. With grid, there's always a chance you picked the one person who's not currently in the stack (the hunter standing out on Magmaw, the person who got the debuff and ran out during red phase Maloriakk, etc).

In fact, due to Murphy's Law, it seems like you pick that person more often than is statistically possible. :<

I agree about not needing more buttons, though. The main reason I didn't use a living seed point on nature's swiftness is cause I have nothing I could bind it to.

In fact, due to Murphy's Law, it seems like you pick that person more often than is statistically possible. :<

Actually, I think it's reasonable to expect the person who needs the swiftmend to be away from the group more often than not simply because the person who needs healing suddenly probably needs that healing because he was standing in the wrong place.

Sure, but that's not what we're talking about here. We were discussing it being tied into mushroom explosions, which becomes a sequence of targeting circle->a different button to activate.

Moreover, I don't think Blizzard would ever just make it a straight targeting circle, because then it would work exactly like Healing Rain and Serenity or whatever the one priests have is called. At least the way it works right now is unique for a "healing area on the ground" spell.

The fact that the Eff might not always pop where it would be ideal is more than made up by it being a completely passive proc (so it gives random bonus healing even when you wouldn't think/bother to use the mana targeting a healing circle) and the fact that you do have some control over where it will appear if you are mindful of people's current positions on a fight.

Tier 12 model has me curious. I love wood-based druid tier, and the whole scorched tree thing could be cool, but the shoulders make or break most sets and I don't know how a tall helm will look on a tauren.

The problem is not that it doesn't pop in an in an ideal place, but that it practically shares a cooldown with a spell that has the exact opposite function. Other healers aren't forced to make this decision.

Frankly, druids being the worst spot healer is higher up on my list of resto concerns than the dual-purpose nature of Swiftmend->Efflorescence. "Wasted" Effs because I had to SM someone off on his own don't bother me that much since I've still got WG if I need some AoE healing on a clump.

It's kind of a different situation, but I'm sure holy paladins aren't big on having to decide between WoG and LoD in any given ~10-15 second period.

Has anyone been on the PTR to see exactly how the new resto mastery works (I'm downloading it right now)? Does it put a buff on people you've recently directly healed that increases HoT ticks on them or does it put a buff on you that increases the power of HoTs you cast for that timeframe? Either way, it's a crazy huge buff compared to what it is now.

Also in the same vein, does the change to moonfire spam work outside of Eclipse or only while in Eclipse? The old way was only in Eclipse but the new change doesn't specifically say.

And finally, if they're adding Earth and Moon to Shrooms, why don't they add it to Starsurge as well? It's always bothered me that the Moonkin specialty spell doesn't apply that buff.

Lunar Shower's bugged on the PTR. It's got the updated tooltip regarding affecting lunar/solar power but it doesn't do it regardless of your current eclipse state, so I don't know how it will play out. Also they changed how it stacks: now it stacks for each moon/sunfire cast instead of stacking from moving around. This means you can stand still and spam and get to a 3 stack, but it also means you need to constantly spam to keep the buff up (it's a 3s buff now). The new graphics for Solar Beam is super awesome and the new graphics for Fungal Growth is basically a combo of the new graphic for Eff with green moldy looking fuzz instead of a big puddle of brown crap.

And the resto mastery's not updated on the PTR yet so we won't know until that patch is applied.

Wait, what are all these druid changes? Mastery is finally not useless? Is there a dump of these changes in the chat thread (goes to look)?

So they're actually going through with the 200% healing crits from the watercooler talk? Are they doing the universal 200% crits like they talked about or just for healing? I'm going to assume just healing for now since that would throw off the damage for things like rogues and enhancement shamans.

The new graphics for Solar Beam is super awesome and the new graphics for Fungal Growth is basically a combo of the new graphic for Eff with green moldy looking fuzz instead of a big puddle of brown crap.

Is the new Solar Beam graphic not completely retarded? Or does it still obscure everything for every player everywhere?

And does the new Fungal Growth not cover up shit as badly as the original Desecration?

I just tested the new druid mastery on the PTR some. It gives you a 10s buff that increases all HoTs cast while its up. Regrowth's HoT always has the buff applied to it, so if Regrowth is your first cast, then its HoT still gets the buff (it might also be considered part of Regrowth and thus get the direct cast increase applied to it, but we won't know unless they change the two percents to be different from each other).

On the Balance side, the Lunar Shower change is both a nerf and a buff. All it effects is moonfire spam, as in only hitting moonfire over and over and over. It works no matter what state you're in, but Moonfire only ever does Solar so you can't ping-pong back and forth between Eclipse states with just Moonfire (you can get to Solar though). If you wait 3s between moonfire casts (say, to cast an Insect Swarm or to tab to another enemy) then the Lunar Shower buff falls off and you can stay in Eclipse forever. And if for whatever reason you find yourself low on mana and you're headed towards Solar Eclipse you can just moonfire spam your way to it for a Euphoria proc (and since moonfire spam once you're at 3 stacks means you regen more mana than you expend, you're also getting mana back that way, albiet just a tiny amount). You can't activate Lunar Eclipse with moonfire spam since moonfire never gives Lunar Energy.

And finally, for some reason my PTR character had a Moonkin Hatchling sitting in his mailbox when I logged in and holy crap that thing's awesome. If this was a dastardly plan by Blizzard to get me to buy one then it might just have worked.

So feral looks like it's due to be buffed yet again in 4.2, which shows just how piss-fucking-awful of a job that Blizzard did balancing things in 4.0. It's looking like it will actually be in the running for a top tier spec as far as melee DPS goes. Unfortunately, it's still inherently inferior to balance due to being melee unless you already happen to be in a ranged-heavy raid.